Windows – Trusted Root certificates regularly disappear on Windows 7

certificateSecuritytrusted-root-cawindows 7

I've installed several self-signed certificates on my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 machine for development purposes. One was installed into Trusted Root CAs and 2 were installed into My Certificates and Trusted People. Every day or two the certificate installed into Trusted Root CAs disappears and I have to re-install it! This is annoying the hell out of me. Why is it happening and how do I stop it?

The other certificates (installed into other stores) do not disappear. My first thought was some kind of Group Policy, but my machine is not part of a domain – though it does obtains its IP address from a corporate DHCP server, so I'm not sure if they can somehow still manage to apply Group Policy to me.

Best Answer

"Root" store solved it

The solution was to install it into the Root store, which puts it under Registry (if you view physical stores in the Certificates snap-in), instead of the AuthRoot store, which puts it under Third-Party. I don't know why it was disappearing from Third-Party, but it hasn't happened since I made this change.

Thanks to Charlie Wilson for pointing me in the right direction. I just wanted to type out the full answer in case anyone else had this problem.

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